“You don’t know her,” Lilia said. “Or me.”

“Better than some man, I suppose,” Emlee said. “There’s only so much you can clean out of a womb. But you watch her, Lilia. She wants you for more than your quick tongue.”

Lilia spent hours combing out Gian’s long hair. Gian tried to endear herself to Emlee and Cora and Larn by bringing them food, warm tea, clean water. Larn was still often gone, consorting with the man she called a priest and his priestesses, though Lilia doubted any of them was any such thing. Larn came home from those meetings pale and drawn, and Gian made her tea.

As high winter dragged on, Gian presented her with a gift: eight white ribbons in a little box.

“Where did you get these?” Lilia asked.

“They will go with your dress,” Gian said.

“You don’t know what the dress is for,” Lilia said.

“I know you’ll tell me when you’re ready to.”

Lilia kept the ribbons with the dress and sat up at night imagining that she could fly.

The days spun out. As winter hinted at low spring, the camp began to stir with rumors of other camps. Camps purged by bloody legionnaires.

“There have been rumors for months,” Emlee said one night while Cora cooked dinner. “About the other camps. Refugees, sometimes. But they won’t kill us all. Who would care for their children? Who would work in their fields?”

“Why don’t you leave?” Lilia asked.

Emlee glanced at Cora, who guffawed. Cora said, “And go where? To Dhai? You think they’d let us through the pass? You think it hasn’t been tried?”

“They’d let you in,” Lilia said.

Emlee said, “My mother died at those gates during the Pass War. This is our place. We will die in it, if we must. Birth is everyone’s beginning. Death is everyone’s end. Doesn’t much matter where you do it.”

Lilia left her with a poultice of everroot and strawberry and started toward the dwelling of her next case. She waved to those she passed. They greeted her by name. It was still strange to be seen.

She walked in a filthy, tattered skirt and tunic, on shoes that were no longer Cora’s but her own. Gian had combed out her hair and worked it into a whirl of braids knotted in colorful string, the way Gian said she had done the hair of noble Dorinah women.

Lilia heard the muttering slosh of footsteps approaching, and turned to see one of the bands of orphans running toward her.

“There’s a man asking for you!” one of the children yelled.

Lilia stilled her steps. The rider rounded a collection of tents just behind the children. The rider wore black. The hilt of a blade stuck through the back of his coat. He called his bear to a halt and dismounted.